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Local high-schoolers display eSTEM projects, research

Rich Swartzentruver, a natural resources science teach at North Salem High School, peers at microorganisms in the water samples from Mill Creek at the Youth Environmental Conference at North Salem High School on Saturday, May 4, 2016.(Photo: Conner Williams / Statesman Journal)Buy Photo

When it comes to practicing environmental science, it's not all about digging in the dirt.

The inaugural Youth Environmental Conference kicked off Saturday at North Salem High School as dozens of high school students from the Salem-Keizer School District showcased their research and projects in the areas of eSTEM (environmental Science Technology Engineering Math).

The conference was organized by the Youth Environmental Council, which is a group of student representatives from a number of the Salem-Keizer high schools that meet each month to plan service projects.

"[The council] decided that it wanted to do one big project just for fun and to see what kind of involvement we could get," said Evan Doll, a senior at Sprague High School and a member of the Youth Environmental Council.

"There's a lot of projects here," Doll said, "that you can get signed up with and get more involved with the community — and see what other students are working on."

“It's pretty powerful when you see what these students are capable of and what they can do.”

Jon Yoder, Salem Environmental Education LLC

Adele Underwood, a senior at Sprague and member of the Youth Environmental Council, agreed that most of the motivation to develop the conference was to share work and research with other students in the area.

"We do all these research projects," Underwood said, "and we share them with our classes at school, and we do have a competition we go to, but if you don't make it past that, it can be kind of discouraging.

"We wanted to see what other people were doing, and I just think the environment is so important and a lot of times we don't think about it in our daily activities," Underwood said. "It's not focused on very heavily in school, so we wanted to do something like this that says, 'Hey, this is really important.'"

In addition to representing the council, Underwood shared a project of her own in which she used a drone to capture thermal images of the snow pack in areas burned by forest fires.

She compared her images as well as soil samples from those areas to images and samples from non-burned areas. What she found is that the burned areas actually had less thermal energy surrounding them than the non-burned ones — because the plants that are able to grow in the non-burned soil held in more heat. Underwood also measured the pH levels of the different samples and found differences between the burned and non-burned soils.

"Students don't get very many chances to showcase their work, and the community doesn't get very many chances to see that work," said Jon Yoder, founder of Salem Environmental Education LLC and a STEM specialist for the Salem-Keizer School District. Yoder helped coordinate the conference with the students of the council.

"It's pretty powerful when you see what these students are capable of and what they can do," Yoder said.

"We want to show that STEM is more than just about building robots and bridges," Yoder said. "It really is deigning and engineering in a variety of arenas, and so environmental education is a great STEM area where all of those areas are combined."

Yoder said that one of the goals of the eSTEM movement is to provide avenues for students to become involved in environmental science through areas of study they might not have thought of right away, like mathematics.

"A lot of this is applied and authentic kinds of math, and so students go through this and they don't really think that they've done math, but that have," Yoder said. "There's just so many things environmental education can bring in; those reading, writing, and math skills that we want students to have all come into play."

High school students in the Salem-Keizer School District interested in joining the council should contact Jon Yoder at 503-602-0745.

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From left, LaMattie Woolley and McKenna Davis, juniors at South Salem High School, pose by their project poster board - which measured colored food preferences in crows - at the Youth Environmental Conference at North Salem High School on Saturday, May 4, 2016.(Photo: Conner Williams / Statesman Journal)

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Adele Underwood, a senior at Sprague High School, stands by her project at the Youth Environmental Conference at North Salem High School on Saturday, May 4, 2016.(Photo: Conner Williams / Statesman Journal)

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Francisco Ramos, a junior from North Salem High, inspects the water samples from Mill Creek for microorganisms that inhabit the water at the Youth Environmental Conference at North Salem High School on Saturday, May 4, 2016.(Photo: Conner Williams / Statesman Journal)